Leadership Minute — Hire Someone Into Their Next Job

Today I’m introducing a new feature, the “Leadership Minute.” Each Leadership Minute will contain a short learning from my leadership experience. I hope they add value to each of you!

Hi, welcome to the Leadership Minute with Chris F. Harvey. Now, you want to
hire great people and build an amazing team. One way to do that is to hire
ambitious, hard-working, excited people who love coming to work every day
and learning and growing.

My favorite way to do that I call hire someone into their next job. What do
I mean by that? Let’s say you have a marketing manager position. You want
to hire someone for whom the marketing manager position is a clear step up.
You do not want to hire someone who already has very similar
responsibilities to the marketing position.

Now why is that so? Because if someone is going to their next job, that
tells me they are ambitious. They want to move higher, and everyone wants
to move higher in their careers. Number two, they love to learn, and that
person is more likely be excited to go the extra mile and get a lot of
great things done in the position than someone else.

Now what happens if you hire someone laterally? Well, that person’s already
done a very similar job in the past. You might say, “Well, they had great
experience.” Yes, but they’re going to likely be bored, and if someone
accepts a job laterally, that tells me that person might not be very
ambitious. Maybe that person isn’t interested in learning and growing
anymore.

Now, you might have to train someone who goes into their next job. That’s
fine. I would rather spend time training someone who’s excited, who’s
ambitious, who’s looking forward to conquering the new position than I
would hire someone who goes laterally, who might already have the
experienced, maybe I don’t have to teach them that much, but they’re likely
to be bored and they might not be very ambitious.

So, for your next position, please make sure you hire them into their next
job, not their last job. Thank you for watching.